In electronic timepieces in which liquid crystal display panels are employed, it has now become commonplace to display hours, minutes and seconds. In addition, it may also be desired to display the day and the date. Under the circumstances, in order to achieve sufficient legibility, it is desirable that the display panel have a large observable surface area.
For a display panel to be operative it must be held in a frame of some sort, provision for electrical connections must be made, a battery must be connected thereto for activating the display, and electronic components for providing a high frequency time standard which can be divided and coded and decoded for activation of the proper portions of the display panel must be connected both to the battery and to the display panel. As is obvious, space must be provided within the watch case for this multiplicity of components.
In order to conserve space, much of the circuitry can be placed upon an IC chip. However, establishment of proper connections between such an IC chip and a display panel are difficult to make by conventional techniques, and assembly of components of miniature size is difficult, especially when such components must be inserted or removed in a specific order due to the fact that they overlap each other. As a result, construction of the watch at the time of manufacture and subsequent repair are both difficult to carry out, particularly where mass production methods are needed for minimizing cost.